Home Office sticks to ‘in due course’ on shotgun licensing shake-up

The Home Office has told MPs it “will undertake a consultation in due course on strengthening the controls on shotguns to bring them more into line with the controls on other firearms”, in a written answer published on Tuesday 8 September. The answer gives no date, and it lands 11 days after the police inspectorate, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) recommended that Section 2 shotgun certificates be brought into line with Section 1 firearms licensing.

What did the Home Office actually say?

The question came from Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Green (Chesham and Amersham), who asked the Home Secretary what discussions she had held with farming organisations about the effect of alignment on rural communities. The reply, from policing minister Sarah Jones, named no such discussions.

It said: “We will carefully consider the views put forward during the consultation before taking any decision on whether and what changes may be necessary in the interests of public safety. The Government will provide an assessment of the impact of any changes that we intend to bring forward, including on rural communities and businesses, at the relevant time.”

The question was tabled on 1 September as a named-day question for answer by 4 September. It was answered four days late.

A consultation promised, but still not published

The Government first confirmed a consultation in its January response to a petition of more than 120,000 signatures opposing the merger of the two regimes. A Westminster Hall debate on that petition on 23 February saw 24 MPs speak against alignment and none in favour, and in August the Countryside Alliance told its members it did not expect the consultation to open before the middle of 2027.

The picture changed on 28 August, when HMICFRS published its thematic inspection of firearms licensing across England and Wales. Its 23 recommendations included a single national licensing authority and the alignment of the Section 1 and Section 2 regimes.

Why does BASC say the inspectorate got Section 2 wrong?

On the same day as the written answer, BASC’s director of firearms Bill Harriman published his assessment of the report, welcoming the single authority and rejecting the shotgun recommendation outright.

“Section 2 to Section 1 has been top of the police legislative ‘shopping list’ for at least 35 years,” Mr Harriman wrote, arguing the inspectorate “appears to have been gulled into asking for it by police sources”. The report, he said, “adduces no evidence to support its inclusion”, and making “such a contentious recommendation without any evidence to back it damages [the inspectorate’s] integrity and credibility”.

He added that many of the report’s other recommendations “are not evidence-led or are predicated on single awful cases, rather than patterns or trends”, and that firearms law had for too long “developed piecemeal, often on the back of single tragic cases”.

On the single authority, Mr Harriman said BASC would seek cross-party support in Parliament for an idea it has pursued since 1992, calling it “a massive opportunity for shooting sports”, while cautioning that he was “uncertain as to the level of political appetite” and that the inspectorate’s timetable was “probably unrealistically short”. HMICFRS recommendations bind neither the police nor the Government.

What happens next?

There is still no date for the shotgun consultation, and the Home Office has now tied its impact assessment, including the effect on rural businesses, to whatever proposals it eventually brings forward rather than to the consultation itself. BASC has said it will publish guidance on responding as soon as the consultation opens.

Certificate holders should also watch the Health Bill, which is completing its Commons stages this week carrying a cross-party amendment on NHS medical markers for licence holders, and the Government’s formal response to the HMICFRS report, which has not yet been published.